At one point, Jessie must have driven me back to The Betsy because I find myself atop the rooftop, sitting in a chair at a table against the rear wall. The moon above me is no longer dented – it is full and bright, orange as a cat’s eye regarding me, and I am sipping a Stella and reading lines of Plutzik by its light:

      If these lesser things are subsumed within the Good—
      These corrupt shapes: desk, mirror or tree –
      The falsely transliterated, strangely planed
      Creatures of eyesight and the sentient bones
      (Themselves in the web of the spider), then all times
      Are poses of the one actor, Time…
      And still it is hot noon on the sea Tethys
      Where the protoplasmic slime begets Aphrodite
      Whose belly is history till the moon falls…

IV. The Pen and the Film

My last day at The Betsy is bright with sun and a pure blue sky, and I decide to take a chaise lounge on the beach and jot notes of my visit. Clipped to my shirt pocket is my Montblanc, the ballpoint with which I’ve written the first draft of the most recent dozen of my books. The young woman in the beach shed provides a large white towel, and the young man hurries out to set up a chaise lounge for me, covered with a fitted terry cloth sheet.
      It is hot beneath the yellow sun, and I take off my shirt and toss it on the lounge to wade out and dive into the aqua blue water of the Atlantic. The water is womb warm, and I swim until my muscles are agreeably weary and my hunger has been stoked to visions of shrimp cocktail on the rooftop with a Stella Artois in which to swim the crustaceans.
      I thank and tip the young man and young woman. By the time I cross the road to The Betsy my swim trunks are already dry, and I ride directly up to the rooftop, order a Stella and shrimp big as large crayfish. And while I wait I think to jot a note and reach to my shirt pocket for my Montblanc where I always carry it. It is not there.
      Aside from the value of the pen (it cost $350), it sat with such balance in my hand, awaiting the inspiration of language, and I am attached enough to it that I am blinded with anxiety at its loss, even while trying to reason that it’s only a thing. But it is truly a cherished thing!
      Calling to the barmaid that I will be back and to watch my things, I ride the elevator to the lobby and jog across the road to the pathway that leads to the beach, my sandals flopping beneath my feet.
      “Did you see a black Ballpoint pen?” I ask at the beach hut, trying to quell the panic in my voice.
      The young woman smiles. “You want pen?” she asks, handing me a disposable gray plastic ballpoint.
      I dash down to the chaise lounge I used and search the creases and folds of the mattress, but it is not there. I stand disconsolately on the beach, as unhappy as if I’d just lost my passport, my wallet, unhappy as if I’d just lost my identity. I truly valued that pen.
      Out of the corner of my eye in the white sand, I glimpse a speck of familiar shiny black and jump for it. About to be swallowed forever by the hot, white sand is my Montblanc!
      Looking around for someone to whom to explain how happy I am, how elated with relief, I realize that this is a moment I cannot share with anyone. Who will understand, who can understand? I am alone with this elation.
      The last act of my day, I decide, will be to watch in my room the 2006 film about Hyam Plutzik—Hyam Plutzik, American Poet, produced and co-directed by the Academy Award nominated Christine Choy with her daughter Ku-long Siegel. Literary advisor to the film was Ed Moran. I fit it into the DVD player and have a cold Stella at hand, my Montblanc with which to take notes.
      Many of the things I have noted in this essay are related in the film, many lines from Plutzik poems are read by Donald Hall, by Hayden Carruth, Stanley Kunitz, Galway Kinnell, and by Plutzik himself (he sounded rather like Lawrence Ferlinghetti—or should I say that Ferlinghetti sounded rather like Plutzik?)
      But the film also tells how Plutzik went into World War II, into the Army Air Corps, in 1942 and served until the end of the war, how he wrote a poem about the ten crew members lost in an American bomber that was shot down, how he wrote a poem entitled “Hiroshima.” The film tells about how his first language was Yiddish, about his determination to be a poet, about his determination to “merit the respect of intelligent men.” It also tells about how he took on the “conventional” anti-Semitism of T. S. Eliot in “For T.S.E. Only,” and how unpopular that was in those days, in that place, how accepted was the anti-Semitism of Hemingway and Eliot and Pound and their peers. He did so compellingly, without embarrassment, implored “brother Thomas…” “Thomas, Thomas” to “weep together for our exile,” ending, “You hypocrite lecteur! Mon semblable! Mon frère!” And this was in upstate New York, a bastion of Republicanism, supportive of the Army McCarthy hearings.
      The film also tells about his family— his children, his sons Jonathan and Alan, his daughters Roberta Plutzik Baldwin and Deborah Plutzik Briggs. And especially about his wife, Tanya.
      She relates how in the few years before his death, on January 8th, 1962, he was becoming more known and how she listens to recordings of her husband reading his poems: “That’s one of the most important pleasures I have.” About how, although he served his country during World War II, he would surely have been opposed to Vietnam.
      But most remarkable is the way the film ends. Tanya Plutzik has been reluctant throughout the filming to allow the film-maker into Hyam’s study in the basement, but she finally consents. It is a modest place, a few bookshelves, a small window at the top edge of the basement wall.
      The camera makes a round of the study, and then Tanya says, “I’m done. Are you done?” And the brief remainder of the film shows her from the back, slowly climbing the basement stairs, while her husband recites: